Realizing that Sanders is going to be portrayed a a dangerous socialist because he has admitted that he is in fact a socialist, and that is going to hurt his chances in the general election is not the same thing as being a victim of Republican fearmongering. It is simply understanding that the US Electorate will not accept an avowed leftist socialist as a President because polls suggest that socialism is not popular with the general electorate. That label will greatly hurt his chances. No amount of lets stand with our principles talk and vote our heart and ideology is going to chance that.
If the most definitive evidence we have about this widespread aversion to socialism is that "polls suggest" it's "not popular" then that sounds like a body of evidence that needs far more rigorous inquiry. I don't see any reason not to make the most of all the time and money we throw into the world's longest election cycle to better test this polling.
God, this argument is so stupid. There is a fucking difference what the far right and republicans think of Obama and what the general electorate thinks of Obama. The general electorate do not think that Obama is a muslim socialist. The general electorate will think that Sanders is a socialist because he has ADMITTED that he is a socialist. That is a big fucking difference.
I was not remotely suggesting that the far right and the general electorate are one and the same, but neither would I make the equally stupid argument that they are somehow entirely separate and distinct from each other, completely immune to whatever political fears tend to infect the other. Plenty of the general electorate watch Fox News. Obama may not be an avowed socialist, but if socialism carries such a strong, unelectable stigma in this country, then just the possibility he was Socialist certainly should have had more impact on his presidential career.
The socialist attacks were incredibly successful against Obama. They participated in killing many of his key legislative initiatives. The difference is Obama never said he was a socialist on record, and his policies were super moderate so the evidence never supported it. Bernie admits it on video, admits it over and over, doesn't shy away from it and his policies are actually super progressive at times.
The socialist attacks were hardly successful by themselves - as you say, they "participated" but it's hardly definitive how integral they were. Between the likes of the birther movement, "death panels", Benghazi and his refusal to acknowledge "radical Islam" as a thing, absolutely unprecedented congressional obstructionism and plenty more anti-Obama initiatives, those socialist attacks have had a whole metric fuckton of help. If simply associating him with Socialism was such a strong leading attack by itself, they'd hardly have had to throw everything *and* the kitchen sink at him as well.
If anything, all they probably did was dilute the efficacy of using Socialism as an attack going forward.
Risking a much less likely to be elected Bernie simply to make a point...
What risk? If Sanders makes it past the primaries to a Democratic nomination, he'd already be far more electable than anyone but his most ardent supporters seem to be giving him credit for. The biggest barrier to that seems to be the Democrats self-inflicted psych out about everyone's supposed crippling aversion to Socialism which doesn't seem to hold up to a lot of scrutiny outside of some polls.